A GERMAN TRAMP PRISON.[63]

The German method of dealing with vagrants and loafers may be studied in its practical details with great advantage by visiting the Labour House of Benninghausen, in the Prussian Province of Westphalia. The establishment is situated in the open country, ten or twelve miles distant from the old town of Soest, and its high boundary walls and spiked fences enclose an area of about twelve English acres. The nearest railway station is four or five miles away, and the visitor's first impression is that of a sparsely populated country, in which the prisoners who from time to time manage to elude the eye of their warders can have but little chance of successful flight. The Labour House was built in 1821 to accommodate 410 persons, and it is administered by the Government of the Province. The books of the establishment value the land at £1,022, while the buildings are insured for £19,950, and the furniture, equipment, and material for £5,329.

Benninghausen is an admirable example of the application of the allopathic principle to penology. As sloth is the vice which brings the majority of prisoners within its walls, so rigorous exertion is the method of cure that is followed. The House is the veriest hive of industry. The idea would never occur to you that these groups of diligent workers, engaged in all sorts of useful crafts and employments, were not long ago wandering aimlessly about the country cherishing the delusive idea that work was beneath contempt, and that the dignity of man consists in requiring someone else to tie your bootlaces. Yet one important principle is strictly followed—whatever the work done, it is not allowed to compete with the free labour market. Hence, efforts are first directed to the provision of every possible need of the Labour House itself and of its inhabitants. This applies not only to the provision of food, but also to the weaving of materials, the making of iron and woodwork, the carrying out of repairs, and other matters of domestic economy. Beyond that the similar needs of other provincial institutions—like the Asylums for the Sick, for the Imbeciles, for the Blind, and for the Deaf and Dumb—are supplied as the convenience of the Labour House allows. This is all done, of course, on a business footing. An accurate account is taken of the labour employed, and the wages of this labour, reckoned on a moderate scale, plus the cost of material and a slight profit to cover contingencies, constitute the price charged by the Director for the goods he sells.

The Province of Westphalia is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, but as the Benninghausen Labour House is the only one in the province it has to be conducted on what is known as the "paritative" basis; it serves for both confessions, though each has its special chaplain. At the time of my visit the institution was housing temporarily, in addition to the ordinary subjects of correction, a number of lads and girls, the children of abandoned parents, the charge of whom had been undertaken by the Poor Law Authority in virtue of the law of 1890, and for whom more suitable provision did not exist at the moment.

The numbers of detainees dealt with during the financial year 1907-8 were as follows:—

Those committed in 1907-8 had committed the following offences:—

Of the men newly admitted, 177 had been detained in a Labour House before, 64 of them more than three times, and the great majority had been imprisoned.

Structurally, the Labour House is not, perhaps, a model of what such an institution might and should be in these days, nor is this surprising when it is remembered that it has stood now for three generations, yet its arrangements are, within the limits determined by space and the architectural ideas of ninety years ago, excellent, and they are certainly excellently supervised. There are three separate blocks of buildings. The principal one contains the administrative rooms, the day-rooms, the dormitories, baths, and kitchens. Separate departments, without contact of any kind, are provided for the sexes, the women being lodged on the ground floor and the men above. The second block contains the workrooms, of which there are five, besides the large bakery and washhouses, viz., a workshop for joiners and carpenters, one for weaving, one for cigar making, one for shoe making and a smithy and machine shop. The third building is the hospital, and is sufficiently isolated. This is not intended, however, for the chronically sick, who, with the physically disabled, are transferred, on medical certificate, to the Provincial Poorhouse and Hospital. Cases of child-birth are removed betimes to the Maternity Hospital, and the mothers afterwards return to the Labour House to complete their terms of imprisonment.

The bedrooms are plain yet light and cheerful apartments, not over-large, but as fresh and airy as an abundance of open windows can make them. Each prisoner has his own little iron bedstead, with straw pallet and pillow, and a coloured counterpane, and his name is boldly written at the head. The utmost care is taken to lodge the prisoners according to age, character, and characteristics. "We have separate bedrooms for the old, the middle-aged, and the young, separate rooms also for the first offenders and for the recidivists," said the Labour Inspector who showed me round the institution, "for we study peculiarities as much as possible. We also study their comfort," he added, "for we put all the snorers together."

The day begins for the inmates at 4.30 during the summer months (April 1 to September 30), and at 5.30 during winter and on Sundays and festivals. The hours are divided as follows:—

4.30 a.m.—At the sound of the bell every prisoner has to rise, dress, and wash, and in a quarter of an hour must have arranged his bedclothes and be ready to leave the dormitory.

4.45 a.m.—Assembling in the corridors the prisoners are numbered, after which (so runs the "Order of the Day"), "they shall offer up at word of command (auf Commando) a silent prayer." Then the field labourers, the implement room workers, and the bakers go to the dining rooms, and the weavers, tailors, shoemakers, cigar makers, and the female inmates to the workrooms, there to begin at once their work.

4.50 a.m.—The bell sounds for the morning meal (soup and bread), the inmates going to the same in bands in charge of the overseers.

9.0 a.m.—Work is then continued without interruption until 9.0, when there is a pause for a quarter of an hour for bread and beer.

11.40 a.m.—A pause for dinner, which is partaken like breakfast in bands. (For the outside labourers a different order is followed.)

12.0 to 1.0 p.m.—A pause, during which the prisoners have at least half an hour in the open air.

4.0 p.m.—A pause of a quarter of an hour for bread and beer.

7.15 p.m. (in winter and on Sundays and festivals, 6.15).—The bell rings for supper, and work ends for the day.

7.50 p.m.—The prisoners are examined for the detection of forbidden articles, and at 7.55 they are marched off to bed.

The work-day is thus about twelve hours in summer. But while, as a rule, the hours are the same for all, work is not altogether measured by time, but according to the capacity of the individual inmate, and where the tasks imposed are unfulfilled at the close of the day, owing to evident sloth or insubordination, some sort of punishment follows.

The dietary on ordinary work-days is as follows:—

Morning.—Coffee with milk and bread.

Noon.—Peas, beans, or lentils with potatoes; vegetable soup with potatoes; cabbage or turnips, with potatoes (the portion of potatoes allowed is 750 grammes for men and 660 grammes for women); or fresh fish and potatoes.

Evening.—Soup, made with rye or wheaten flour, bread, oats, buckwheat, rice or potatoes. (Of bread 550 grammes are allowed to each man and 400 grammes to each woman daily). At Easter, Whitsuntide, Christmas, and on the Emperor's birthday, beef or pork, with beer, is given. Twice a week 100 grammes of meat may be served to men, and 80 grammes to women, instead of the fat which enters into the noon meal. Once a week cheese (100 grammes) is served to men and women, and once also a salted herring.

The whole of the prisoners are kept to work of a kind suited to their strength, capacity and sex, their employment being determined by the Director and the resident doctor together. The principal methods of employment are the following:—

(1) Farm work on the provincial estate at Eichelborn, for which purpose men are farmed out as required.

(2) Building and earth works in connection with provincial institutions and undertakings.

(3) A series of industries carried on within the walls of the house.

(4) Works on the buildings, both within and without.

(5) Domestic and culinary work such as baking, washing, cleaning, sewing, etc.

The baking alone is a very serious task, for a thousand mouths have to be fed every day, since the two large ovens provide, not only for the Labour House itself, but for two other large public institutions situated not far away. In the weaving shop there are fourteen hand-looms for linen, the yarn for which is bought. The work done by the carpenters is various and thoroughly creditable. Furniture in request for provincial institutions is chiefly made, such as tables, benches, chests, chairs, toilette tables, and the like, and some of the work I saw would compare with the best products of free labour. "We have just sent out an account for £2,000 worth of goods," said the labour master with pride. The business of cigar making is not, like the other departments, carried on by the Labour House on its own account. The plan adopted is for labour to be farmed to tobacco manufacturers, who send the raw material with a skilled overseer to direct the various processes of preparation. The administration undertakes no responsibility for the quality of the work done, or for the material spoiled, though, on the other hand, the wages charged to the manufacturer are very low, viz., 75 pfennige or 9d. per day. The various employments detailed in a recent official report included locksmithry, joinery and carpentry, basket and chair making, tinning, mason's work, roofing, painting and plastering, weaving and spooling, tailoring, boot and shoe making, saddlery, hair sorting, book-binding, cigar making, machine turning, repairs to tools and implements, copying, manifolding, baking, butchery, knitting, sewing, laundry work, farm and field work, and road making. The weaving department produced 45,547 metres of stuff, the tailoring department produced 158 complete suits and 2,890 single garments, the sewing department 5,099 bed coverlets, towels, shirts, aprons, handkerchiefs, neckerchiefs, etc.; the shoe making department 748 pairs of shoes, the carpentry department 1,319 articles of furniture, and so forth. The total value of the goods produced and of the labour farmed during the year was £6,164, which more than covered the cost of food and clothing.

Formerly the Labour House had its own farm, but this was separated some years ago, and it has since been conducted as an independent undertaking, though still by the aid of forced labour. Men are lent to the farm manager as required, at the rate of 60 pfennige or 7d. a day of ten or twelve hours, according to the season, and some forty or fifty are always employed in one way or other on the land. The Labour House buys its rye for bread, its milk, its butter, and its potatoes from the farm management at the full market prices, though, on the other hand, it sells to the farm all the implements of iron and wood which it is capable of supplying, and also makes its repairs.

In the year 1907-8 of an average personnel of 330, there were employed in domestic and other work for the institution 152 persons, while 142 were employed on work for the Provincial Administration, 50 were employed by outside persons in farm, industrial, and other work, and 10 worked for officers of the Labour House.

The entire cost in that financial year was £24 18s. 9d. per head, this sum including food, clothing, materials, and administration, and of the total expenditure the prisoners earned by their labour £7 13s. 10d. per head, leaving a deficit of £17 4s. 11d. per head, equal to 6s. 7½d. per week, to be made up by the Province. As compared with several years ago, there was an increase in both the gross and the net cost.

There is absolutely no contact between the workers of the several trade departments, for all save the bakers work behind locked doors, whose small windows only the officials may approach. The work, too, is strenuous in the full meaning of that hackneyed word. Every man literally works ever in his taskmasters eye; and not only so, but he must complete each day the task which is allotted to him. According to his capacity, and the character of his employment, a fixed pensum is required of him, and unless this is done there is a penalty to pay; while, on the other hand, to the industrious, who exceed the inevitable minimum of effort and output, a small reward is offered. The latter only ranges from a farthing to a penny a day, though by the accretions of a year it may grow into a sum which proves a welcome help to a man on his discharge. This accumulating bonus is, as a rule, kept intact until the time of discharge comes, when it is handed to the Police Authority of the place to which the man elects to go, to be paid to him in instalments or otherwise used advantageously on his behalf.

The women's department does not need particular description. It is conducted quite independently of the men's, though, of course, under the same higher officials, and its inmates are put to occupations suitable to their capacity and strength, not a small part of their time naturally being taken up by the domestic, culinary, and other indoor work inseparable from so large an establishment. In this department are found many members of a class which is one of the saddest excrescences of our modern urban life. These women of evil profession are, as a rule, detained in the Labour House for six months after the expiration of their gaol sentence. On discharge they are sent to their legal domicile if without fixed home or regular means of subsistence, but if they cannot establish a legal settlement they are handed over to the Poor Law Authority. It may be noted, however, that Germany does not as yet go as far as certain cantons of democratic Switzerland in the restraint of those single women of known moral weakness, so well known to English Poor Law workers, whose periodical visits to the workhouse imply an ever increasing burden on the public funds. Such persons the Berne Poor Law Authorities, for example, keep under duress indefinitely without the slightest misgiving that the sacred principle of individual liberty, in whose misused name so many wrongs to society and the commonwealth are committed, is being infringed. In Germany, as in England, these persons may, indeed, come under the restraining influence of the Poor Law when physically or intellectually defective, but for the rest the only power of detention resides in the penal provisions applicable, as above shown, to females found guilty of professional solicitation, a class to which most of the moral breakages which find their way into the women's wards of our own workhouses do not in the least belong.

Formal prison discipline is enforced in the Labour House at Benninghausen as in others. Possibly the purple patches of relaxation which variegate the lives of the inmates are too few and too far between. Here, however, the German authorities doubtless act according to the teaching of experience, and no one will doubt that a theory—whether satisfactory or not—lies at the basis of their practice. Sunday is, of course, a free day, and the high festivals of the Church are observed by the prisoners of both confessions and of none. Then a great quiet falls upon this house of toil. Black clothes become the order of the day, even to the soft round cap which covers the close-cropped head, and as often as the church-going bell sounds, the inmates are led to and from religious service. For the rest the time is divided between workshop, bed, and board—and unless the rules are scrupulously observed there is a good deal of board about the bed.

It goes without saying that the men are treated humanely and justly, but of indulgence there is no pretence, and I confess that as this aspect of Labour House discipline created upon my mind its own clear and vivid impression, I recalled that saying of Prince Bismarck, when he laid down the law of courtesy, "Politeness even to the murderer, but hang him all the same." I do not, however, presume to criticise the rÉgime followed; may be it is the best for the people who pass beneath it. It is the serious side of life, rather than its levities and insouciance, which they need specially to know. Why should the tramp have all the ease and the honest worker all the hardships of life? It sounds like the refinement of cruelty, but in this land of Gargantuan smokers not only is the consoling companionship of tobacco forbidden to the mass of prisoners, but even the cigar makers themselves fall under the general ban, and may not test the result of their own deft handiwork.

Severe punishment is very seldom necessary, and Benninghausen does not possess the provision for treating acts of extreme misdemeanour which is to be found in some other German Labour Houses. "Arrest" in various grades is the worst penalty awarded. That means imprisonment in a dark cell, with bare boards for a bed and bread and water for diet. Even here, however, every fourth day brings respite and is, for that reason, known as a "good day" (guter Tag), for on it the prisoner may again, for one brief space, taste the joy of his accustomed straw pallet, while, to comfort or to tantalise him, he is also given warm food. But it is a fugitive bliss, for next day the pallet goes and warm food with it, and the erring one sleeps again on the floor and quenches his thirst at the water tap. A short time before my visit eight or ten of the incorrigible young "foster-children" of whom I have spoken had escaped from the Labour House while returning from church. A hue and cry was promptly raised, and in a couple of hours they were recaptured. They were birched for their escapade, for under the law referred to above the parental authority is transferred to the public foster parents, even to the extent of the right to inflict due bodily chastisement. With such exceptions, corporal punishment is unknown in the Labour House. The punishment for the loafer, the idler, and the tramp is hard work, and about its genuineness there can be no doubt whatever. But what would you otherwise? It is work which these men need, and want of it which has been their undoing. Look at it in that way. The Labour House is in effect a Continuation School. In it the hapless sons of the commonwealth who have failed to learn the lesson of industry in their early years are enabled to make good this important deficiency in their education. It is also coercive. Just as Germany applies compulsion in the instruction of adults who have failed to master their R's betimes, so it applies compulsion in imparting to the thriftless and shiftless members of society the spirit and habit of orderliness, industry, and self-control.

No one who has been inside a Tramp Prison can fail to detect the beneficial influence of rigid discipline upon the physique and bearing of these tramps and loafers of yesterday and the day before. It was hard to believe that the gangs of smart-looking men, who briskly deployed in the quadrangle in their clattering wooden shoes, were members of the same slouching brotherhood whose favourite haunt is the King's highway. One little scene, enacted all in a moment before my eyes, would have done credit to a drill-ground. A band of prisoners were returning along the quadrangle from exercise to their work, a warder behind them. Arrived at the doorway of the workshop, they halted dead at signal, fell into two lines, and stood motionless at attention with the rigidity and solemnity of a military watch, while the warder ponderously passed between them and led the way into the building. For they can, after all, be galvanised into life and vigour, into agility and alertness, these licensed drones of the commonwealth, these worthless hangers-on of the street corner and the highway, whom we are accustomed to regard as "finished and finite clods" whose betterment only a miracle could compass; all that is needed is the will to override their weakness and make them men in spite of themselves.

It may be asked, however, what is the practical effect of Labour House discipline on the after life of those who have experienced it? That a large proportion are won to a regular life of industry cannot, unfortunately, be said, nor would it be expected. In proof of this self-evident admission stands the patent fact that many of the inmates are recidivists who have been in and out of the Labour House time after time. Questioned on the point the Director placed the percentage of genuine reformations at 25, and the proportion of those who are directly benefited, without being actually reclaimed, at from a third to a half of the whole. "One half at the outside," was his most sanguine estimate, volunteered, I must add, without reference at the moment to books or memoranda. But cure in even one case out of every four, and improvement in one of every two, is no inconsiderable achievement when we remember the hard and almost hopeless material with which the Labour House has to deal, and the virtual inability of our own method of treating the vagrant and the loafer to effect any reformative result whatever. Obviously, it is impossible to expect accurate statistics on the question, for reasons not by any means confined to the impossibility of following the history of every discharged case, but one fact alone tells an eloquent tale. The Labour House for Westphalia was erected in 1821. Since that time the population of the province has vastly increased, and the economic revolution consummated in the interval has created a new kind of itinerancy, that of machine-bred labour, yet it has not been found necessary to enlarge the Labour House, whose capacity is to-day as adequate to the demands made upon it as it was ninety years ago. Not only so, but (disregarding the abnormal numbers of the last two years) the number of offenders of the kind for whom the institution exists is actually decreasing proportionately to population.

The following were the commitments to Benninghausen during the twenty years 1890 to 1909:—

Other causes have, no doubt, helped to bring about this relative diminution in the number of commitments—amongst them the development of the Voluntary Labour Colonies with their ever-open doors—but at Benninghausen it is believed that the operation of the anti-vagrancy law takes the first place.

Probably the question has before now passed through the reader's mind—what becomes of the 300 or 400 men and women who are returned from the Labour House to liberty in the course of every year? When a prisoner has served his time a problem arises which requires the most circumspect handling. What shall be done with him? Shall he be simply turned adrift at the gates in the hope that he will continue to follow in freedom the path of industry which he has entered while under restraint? The Benninghausen Labour House makes no such wreck of its own reformative work. On the contrary, every effort is made to encourage the prisoner to persist in a regular and honest life. He is allowed to choose his destination, and the Police Authorities of the locality are communicated with beforehand, so that they may be ready to provide for his temporary lodging, and either to help him to work themselves or to enlist the offices of private persons able so to do. In towns there always exists some philanthropic society which is ready to take the case in hand; in the country the helping hand is often that of the clergyman, Roman Catholic or Protestant, as the case may be. Here also is seen the utility of the Labour Colony—and to Westphalia, be it noted, belongs the honour of having founded the original Colony, of which the thirty-three others scattered over Germany are copies—which frequently serves as a temporary refuge for men who, having passed through the mill of adversity and humiliation, and been given a glimpse of better things, have no desire to drift into the old demoralising ways.